h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When choosing your queue be sure to also take a close look at the checkout operator. If you frequent a particular supermarket you can save yourself lots of time and grief by learning which ones to avoid.

In my experience these are trainees (for obvious reasons), large slow-moving middle-aged women who tend to make the average sloth look hyperactive, and post-retirement aged men who tend to assume that as they are not in a hurry, neither is anyone else.

Avoid elderly ladies who are not technological clued-up: They generally have to scan every item five times as they haven't quite got the idea that they have to direct the barcode toward the scanner. They like to inspect every item you've purchased and make comments, approving or otherwise.

Scruffy teenage-girls are worth a miss as their thoughts are rarely on you or the job (smartly turned out ones are generally better in attitude (how old does that make me sound?)). I recently went through one checkout where the girl had to pause between items to scratch violently. Eventually she scratched herself so hard she drew blood and, between scanning our purchases, she paused to lick her fingers and bath her wounds with saliva.

Other checkout annoyances are the customers in front of you who take hours to get out of the way, generally women who look suprised when asked to pay, take ages to find a method of payment, and then decide to have a good old clearout of their suitcase-sized handbag before departing.

I also hate those checkout operators who don't put your shopping through in the order you put it on the belt. I put it there in that order because that's how I want to put it in my bags! I want the heavy stuff first and the crushable items last. I want to keep my refrigerated items together, and so on. I must stop ranting - I can feel my blood pressure shooting up.

Yep, very very true.

It's not only which ones to avoid though - if you do indeed frequent a particular supermarket, you'll soon find your favourites. Choosing the most attractive checkout operator is a pastime I may be a little familiar with......

I used to work on checkouts myself, and I may work there again - so maybe I shouldn't elaborate so much (!!!) - but it's soooo true. Especially about the "scruffy teenage girls".

To be balanced, it should be said this is often true of the scruffy teenage boys as well. But as anyone who has been to a supermarket will tell you, there are very few scruffy teenage boys on checkouts.

This is unarguably because they all work out in the warehouse...... Believe me, I know......

Sometimes you will come across checkout operators who are known as "multi-skilled". In my personal experience, where I worked, the majority of these were well turned-out and female. I think the term "multi-skilled" means they can scan your goods *and* talk the hind legs off a donkey at the same time.

I'll think of some more later.......

Guys this is great stuff. You should have been around when I was putting this through Peer Review. How about you write an entry on "Supermarket Employees". I think you've got the beginnings of a great entry here

BBS

Yeah I'm game for an entry about employees. Might end my holiday work at a well-known supermarket though. I'll get drafting.

Look forward to reading it.

Curiously enough, three hours after my post, I had a call from my girlfriend who was at the checkout at Sainsbury's. After completing our weekly shop she discovered that she had left her switch card at home! She had to call me to come down to the shop and pay. I bet that pleased the people waiting behind her!

Oh yeah, the people behind would've looked severely narked, for sure. Fortunately, most supermarkets can now do a wonderful thing called "store transaction", whereby the whole receipt is printed out with this special barcode on the bottom.

Then (when the payment turns up!!!) the sale can take place, just by scanning in the barcode on the receipt. This means that all the other people in the queue can go through in the meantime. Which saves them waiting for half an hour........

And then they would be *very* severely narked.

Yeh, that's exactly what happened. The only "narked" person was me who had to shell out £80 I hadn't budgeted on. (I made her pay for dinner later).